I scrambled up the ladder into their garret, and sat down on an old hair trunk, which he pulled up to a table. There was nothing in the room but the bed and this table, which was strewed with papers, covered closely with writing. Abel stood beside them, shuffling them with great embarrassment.
"It's a good deal to ask of a stranger," he said; "but you spoke about my sketches, and"——"Well, I have no funds."
"I think I understand," after waiting. "You have written something of which you would like my opinion."
"Yes, that's it. Not that it would make me think differently of it, but I'd like to know how the world would take it,——see? And you could give me a notion of that. Though whatten judges are they?" tossing the papers. "See how they met Keats and Robbie Burns!"
He pushed over the sheets to me one by one, gravely silent as I read. They were principally verses, as was to be expected,—one or two tales, the scene laid in Italy or France, after the manner of young authors,—and a tragedy. Not a line which did not show absurdly enough his utter lack of knowledge,—mistakes as to fact, misspelt words, deficient grammar, verses halting on all sorts of feet. Yet, with all this, there were flashes here and there of power and feeling; and the English was, strangest of all, not stilted, but the simple, homely words which he used every day. I held the last paper a long time; I had not the moral courage to tell the boy the truth. Evidently, however, he cared very little for my opinion, but sat pinching his lips, vaguely staring into space, as usual.
"You do not think any publisher would take them, I see. Well, it's likely. Did you see these lines?"——picking up a page. "This passage, now?"——reading it. "I think no one could have said that more finely."
He had chosen the best stanza; but the speech made me dumb.
"You need training, Steadman," I said, at last. "It is only right to be honest with you. Two or three years of hard study would fit you to make some mark in the world. But you need that; and my advice to you is, to put your papers resolutely away, and go to work. Make enough money to give yourself schooling, and you will be the more fit to hold the pen when the time comes. The world's a big workshop, in which a man can shape what fate he pleases; but it is a workshop still."
His eyes had wandered off before I had finished,—a faint, dreamy smile on his face.
"Yes, education. Oh, of course that will be included. I mean to be a profound scholar, when the time comes. I thought of making the law my profession. It will be a very short time now."